Having playtested a lot now, the turn 4 kill feels almost like a sure thing vs. no interaction and very likely vs. minimal interaction (e.g a deck that packs 4 paths as its only real creature removal). It's pretty unreal for a deck with as much interaction as DS to kill on turn 4 consistently.
For reference, Twin only killed T4 ~60% of the time with no interaction, if I recall.
Twin fought through interaction, so does DS. I don't see that as a bad thing. If the threshold is a T4 kill against zero interaction then Champion of the Parish into BTE+Lightning Mauler gets there and so does mono green stompy.
Decks are supposed to interact. Cards like Thoughtseize raise the bar for how much interaction you can get away with including. Without discard in the format if your strategy relies on killing one creature before T4 and then wrathing you need 8-9 removal spells. With discard, you need more along the lines of 18. Of course, good blockers can count in this situation too and I think that's where the best argument for SFM comes into play. It's a color that needs help, and is excellent board presence without being overly aggressive.
I'm more a brewing theorist than anything. And I think that a lot of the people struggling in the format right now, simply aren't tuning their decks to the right tolerances. Normally, you want to tune so that the deck is good on a mulligan to 6. There's too much discard right now though. You're effectively going to 5 due to it. It's a format of attrition. Blow all the resources quickly, and play from the top. Some decks do that better than others, but with the right cards they're all capable of it.
No, it can very easily kill on turn 4 through 2 or 3 removal or interactive spells.
That's what it should be doing though. That's the right speed for an aggressive deck.
Yep. I instantly know that someone has no clue what they're talking about when they say that Counterspell would be too powerful for Modern. Like, are you kidding? We have decks running 4 Cavern of Souls, we have Abrupt Decay, we have 1 mana 10/10s, and we have a card that almost nobody even uses because counters are so bad, Boseiju. Even if counters got good, there's so much blue hosing hate available in Modern that nobody plays because the blue decks aren't good enough to care about. I don't think even Counterspell would be enough to even blue with black and green, but it would at least be a start.
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My guess is that they're very scared of Snapcaster Mage.
They are. I don't have the source on me but they've gone on record saying that snapcaster+goodcounterspell would be too oppressive. Whether this comes from testing, theorycrafting or pot-induced-visions is anybody's guess.
I think that LSV and some other Pro's have stated that it would be oppressive in Modern.
I think the real concern would be UBx becoming to good. getting to run the best hand disruption plus counterspell back up could lead to nightmare games in which one player never resolves a single threat/spell against a wall of disruption and permission backed up by snapcaster mage.
I think the concerns people have with a UU counter target spell affect is that 8 targeted discard spells, 8 hard counters counterspell + Cryptic and Snapcaster mage might make a viable deck in which it is very possible to on average resolve no spells. T1 IoK, T2 IoK/TS or counterspell, T3 IoK/TS leave up counterspell T4 you can start snaping back the proper spells to simply deny your opponent any possibility of actually resolving any thing.
While I am in favor of a strong counterspell if not actual counterspell it is a very powerful affect and it does have the risk of introducing a deck that has a critical mass of counters and discard spells that can in a manner similar to Lantern Control lock the opponent out of making any relevant actions.
After thinking about it a bit more, I'm pretty sure traverse is getting the axe in the next update or the next one after that. It's as op as GSZ.
SFM has a reasonable chance of getting unbanned but I'm not that sure of that.
Would a Spell Snare that also got 1 CMC spells be broken (think of a Prohibit with 1 mana shaved)? I feel it wouldn't even be Too Strong For Standard™. At this point, I think aggressive printings for blue are in order. The GBx goodstuff suite has been getting out of hand for quite some time now and has reached a critical mass. Like someone said several pages ago, it's hypocritical that Wizards lets this continue while White and Blue fester and rot. The time for caution is over. Make some unbannings and print either something like that or straight up Counterspell.
After thinking about it a bit more, I'm pretty sure traverse is getting the axe in the next update or the next one after that. It's as op as GSZ.
SFM has a reasonable chance of getting unbanned but I'm not that sure of that.
So you basically want to swap a fair tutor for a tutor that also cheats said tutored cards into play?
I thought the whole point of banning tutors and cantrips was to increase variance so multiple games can play out differently. What you are suggesting is more of a color preference thing then a balancing thing and is inherently biased.
Traverse the Ulvenwald isn't by any means ban-worthy. For one thing it doesn't, unlike some of the tutors already legal in Modern (or Stoneforge Mystic for that matter) sideline the actual mana costs of any of the cards it searches up. Not to mention it does require much more setup then Stoneforge Mystic or, say, Collected Company; Tarfire isn't something you really want to play on it's own merits, nor is Mishra's Bauble.
Speaking of Stoneforge Mystic please don't bring up the "dies to removal" argument. It has been done to death and nobody is convinced. I could just as easily say Hypergenesis is OK because "it can be countered" but I don't think I'd have any takers on that one. It's a really powerful card that would most certainly have a major impact on the format as it would substantially raise it's power level which is why I'm almost certain WotC aren't considering unbanning it.
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In my dream, the world had suffered a terrible disaster. A black haze shut out the sun, and the darkness was alive with the moans and screams of wounded people. Suddenly, a small light glowed. A candle flickered into life, symbol of hope for millions. A single tiny candle, shining in the ugly dark. I laughed and blew it out.
Many thanks to HotP Studios. Special thanks to DNC for this great sig.
SFM is not a tutor like traverse or gsz or mystical tutor. It tutors batterskull mainly and that's pretty much it. Traverse can tutor bullets post sb. SFM is very powerful, that's why I always thought it'd get never unbanned. But seeing as white midrange decks that would use it are nonexistant and the format is super aggro and ramp happy, I don't see it being bad for the metagame.
Traverse is not fair cos its the definition of a broken tutor --> cheap and searches for almost anything. The setup it needs is supposed to be the balancing part, but modern has proven that is not enough with cards like bauble and tarfire. And I'm pretty sure they think the same as me at wizards, and if they DO ban something, traverse will be the target and not DS. Plus they prefer to let decks live instead of totally destroying them.
Cards like DS are fine because even if they are very powerful in the right deck, magic balances them by only letting you play 4 of them, and since these types of cards don't usually have functional reprints, everything's good. But then tutors get printed and it gets messy. Has happened during all of magic's lifetime. There's a reason tutors have premium spots on ban lists.
Except traverse doesn't tutor for bullets, it mainly searches for shadow, an occasional Goyf, or a Ranger in really slow games.
You can't compare it to gsz, gsz mainly slots Into every green deck and forces all of them to play it as a 4, along with putting it back into the deck as reusable. As of now, traverse is mainly used in one deck
Yes, GSZ is a superior tutor to traverse, since it doesn't even have a drawback other than needing the creature to be green. So what. Mystical tutor was banned in legacy (only played mostly in storm I believe) despite vampiric tutor being already banned.
Ironically, traverse is better in DS decks than GSZ.
Surprised Wizards hasn't experimented with 2 cmc counters that cost UU and have a restriction or drawback. The last time they made one it was good in standard but not a problem. If they experimented with counters like that more they would be more likely to make one appropriate for modern and standard.
well they have printed 3 so far in moderns card pool and all of them see no real play.
The straw that broke the camel's back with Stoneforge Mystic wasn't Batterskull but Sword of Feast and Famine. Paring her with any equipment cards you would normally play on their own merits (of which there are quite a few in Modern and that list goes up significantly once you can reliably tutor for them) and reasonable evasive threats is just asking for trouble.
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In my dream, the world had suffered a terrible disaster. A black haze shut out the sun, and the darkness was alive with the moans and screams of wounded people. Suddenly, a small light glowed. A candle flickered into life, symbol of hope for millions. A single tiny candle, shining in the ugly dark. I laughed and blew it out.
Many thanks to HotP Studios. Special thanks to DNC for this great sig.
You're talking about standard, and even then, I think it was all about batterskull and not the sword.
Anyways, the card that would be tutored 95% of the times with SFM in Modern would be batterskull.
I'm not even saying I'm 100% sure SFM would be fine in Modern, specially in the long run. But since I'm someone who has no problem with unbanning a card and banning it later on if it becomes a problem, I'd be curious to see SFM unbanned and the (possibly positive) changes it would bring to the modern metagame. If later on they print another even better batterskull card, well, bye bye SFM no problemo.
You're talking about standard, and even then, I think it was all about batterskull and not the sword.
Anyways, the card that would be tutored 95% of the times with SFM in Modern would be batterskull.
I'm not even saying I'm 100% sure SFM would be fine in Modern, specially in the long run. But since I'm someone who has no problem with unbanning a card and banning it later on if it becomes a problem, I'd be curious to see SFM unbanned and the (possibly positive) changes it would bring to the modern metagame. If later on they print another even better batterskull card, well, bye bye SFM no problemo.
The Big winners if SFM is unbanned are Abzan, Bant Eldrazi and possibly GW Tron. People under value SFM to much in this forum, she makes equipment far better than it currently is. The biggest issue that Equipment has in Modern is that it is a bad top deck on a naked board and running one of's without a tutor affect is to unreliable. SFM does nothing to bolster a base W deck and I don't even think UWx control decks would want to play it as Celestial beats and instant speed token generators. Maybe BWx tokens gets a boost as flying 5/5 life linking souls tokens does sound strong.
I don't see tron or eldrazi playing SFM, or at least being much better than their other options.
I'm more interested in the losers of SFM's unban, but that's hard to predict, so many variables. Burn and affinity are obvious, then there would be so many metagame changes... this one goes up, then this down, then this up cos of that, etc.
Death and Taxes, Mardu, Esper and Jeskai decks would be clear winners as well.
I don't think D&T gets much better with SFM added. That deck really needs another hate bear that attacks a common aspect of the meta-game on the level of Arbiter or Thalia, SFM would help the deck but it would still suffer from the same issues it does now.
Not sure if Esper and Jeskai control decks even run it, maybe it helps a mid-range strategy in those colors or perhaps in enables a new version of caw-blade mid-range to exist. Or maybe they shift towards tap out control
biggest winner IMO is Bant eldrazi simply because the creatures they already run have positive interactions with the creature and the equipment. Just blinking SFM with Displacer for bullets. Fallowed closely by Abzan
certainly other decks will get a boost from SFM but not as much as those two. I mean you could say the same thing about Mental Misstep, it is unbanned all sorts of decks get a boost but others will benefit more than others and perhaps the margins will be vast or perhaps negligible.
I don't worry too much about SFM because the amount of removal in modern is insane. It literally dies to everything which would usually mean its dead the turn it comes into play. And even if you untap with it, about the best thing you can do in modern with her is drop BS, which is good, but certainly not game ending. There are also other avenues to tread with it so its a multidimensional card that would add a lot of additional interaction and combat lines. IDk, maybe its too good but looking at DSJ decks and the kinds of life swings they bring on a regular basis, the format needs something to fight back. Of course what could happen is someone comes up with Death Shadow Esper and suddenly we have DS's running around with swords hanging out of their mouths...
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Modern GB Rock U Flooding Merfolk RUG Delver Midrange WU Monks UW Tempo Geist GW Bogle GW Liege UR Tron B Vampires
Affinity Legacy
Fish
Goblins
Burn
Reanimator
Dredge
Affinity EDH W Akroma GBW Ghave BRU Thrax GR Ruric I advocate for the elimination of the combo archetype in Modern. I believe it is degenerate and unfun by its very nature and will always limit design space and cause unnecessary bans.
I don't worry too much about SFM because the amount of removal in modern is insane. It literally dies to everything which would usually mean its dead the turn it comes into play. And even if you untap with it, about the best thing you can do in modern with her is drop BS, which is good, but certainly not game ending. There are also other avenues to tread with it so its a multidimensional card that would add a lot of additional interaction and combat lines. IDk, maybe its too good but looking at DSJ decks and the kinds of life swings they bring on a regular basis, the format needs something to fight back. Of course what could happen is someone comes up with Death Shadow Esper and suddenly we have DS's running around with swords hanging out of their mouths...
Oddly enough, if they did that, Sword of Feast and Famine is quite good against DS/Goyf as threats.
Death and Taxes, Mardu, Esper and Jeskai decks would be clear winners as well.
I don't think D&T gets much better with SFM added. That deck really needs another hate bear that attacks a common aspect of the meta-game on the level of Arbiter or Thalia, SFM would help the deck but it would still suffer from the same issues it does now.
Not sure if Esper and Jeskai control decks even run it, maybe it helps a mid-range strategy in those colors or perhaps in enables a new version of caw-blade mid-range to exist. Or maybe they shift towards tap out control
biggest winner IMO is Bant eldrazi simply because the creatures they already run have positive interactions with the creature and the equipment. Just blinking SFM with Displacer for bullets. Fallowed closely by Abzan
certainly other decks will get a boost from SFM but not as much as those two. I mean you could say the same thing about Mental Misstep, it is unbanned all sorts of decks get a boost but others will benefit more than others and perhaps the margins will be vast or perhaps negligible.
I would argue that mana denial is much more core to DnT than the taxing. At least in legacy, its the symmetry-breaking interaction between port/waste and vial that wins me more games than anything else. Thalia is fantastic in legacy too, don't get me wrong, but she works in conjunction with the mana denial plan. You also have karakas and Mom to protect her. A Karakas,a vial on 2 or 3 and the corresponding cmc thalia can make it almost impossible for the opponent to win.
Thalia just isn't nearly as good in a non-cantrip format like modern, and arbiter+ghost quarter, while cute, is easy to play around, and arbiter is really bad on its own. If you want DnT to be a tier 1 deck in the format, you need a wasteland variant that actually functions as denial at the very least.
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Legacy
Death and Taxes Pauper
UB Teachings
Tortured Existence
Murasa Tron Modern
Pod (RIP)
Bloom(RIP)
Merfolk
Although I am neither a Tron- nor a Bant Eldrazi player, I doubt that either of those decks would play SFM. Certainly not Tron, that deck has too few flex spots and dropping Karn or their other bigstuff seems like a bad idea. Eldrazi has some more flex spots or bad cards to swap out, but SFM is a 6 card package that doesn't really fit the theme of the deck. It's bad with Cavern of Souls, bad with Ancient Stirrings, bad with Eldrazi Temple...I just don't see it here either. It might happen, but SFM would require major changes in the deck's structure which might weaken the deck's core too much.
Esper Shadow is already a thing, but SFM without Batterskull seems too weak in that deck to play. If you do play Batterskull Death's Shadow becomes kind of obsolete.
Stoneforge would be a welcome addition to modern for sure. What it actually adds to the format is much more interesting than what Jace would add if he were unbanned.
My final predictions for modern changes;
Stoneforge unbanned
Bloodbraid Elf unbanned (lots of pros have come out recently saying this ban was a mistake)
Although I am neither a Tron- nor a Bant Eldrazi player, I doubt that either of those decks would play SFM. Certainly not Tron, that deck has too few flex spots and dropping Karn or their other bigstuff seems like a bad idea. Eldrazi has some more flex spots or bad cards to swap out, but SFM is a 6 card package that doesn't really fit the theme of the deck. It's bad with Cavern of Souls, bad with Ancient Stirrings, bad with Eldrazi Temple...I just don't see it here either. It might happen, but SFM would require major changes in the deck's structure which might weaken the deck's core too much.
Esper Shadow is already a thing, but SFM without Batterskull seems too weak in that deck to play. If you do play Batterskull Death's Shadow becomes kind of obsolete.
It is a mistake to think of SFM as a 6 card package; 2 mystics with a couple of select swords, in a deck with ancient stirrings, would actually be quite powerful.
Yeah, Tron most definitely won't play SFM on any level.not enough flex spots and our threats are better. SFM is good because it's very efficient and drops a big threat for a small investment. Tron doesn't care about that one bit, Tron pumps huge resources to play the biggest stuff, full stop. If Batterskull were better than other t3 Tron threats, the deck would just be playing it without SFM right now, we have the mana
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That's what it should be doing though. That's the right speed for an aggressive deck.
Are you guys kidding?
At least there's some merit in speculating DS or trsverse, thoughtseize ban talk sounds scrubby and biased.
I can't believe people had advocated for counterspell and then turned around and *****ed about discard. Gross.
You could ban Seize and black would still be far better than blue.
Modern players, less than Standard but still, have an irrational fear of blue.
Until there is an unconditional counter for U, nothing will 1 for 1 like Seize.
I mean *****, you remember when ppl talked about banning Snaps?
The anti blue bias is legit hysterical, as in mentally ill.
Spirits
UBR Grixis Shadow UBR
UR Izzet Phoenix UR
UW UW Control UW
GB GB Rock GB
Commander
BG Meren of Clan Nel Toth BG
BGUW Atraxa, Praetor's Voice BGUW
I think that LSV and some other Pro's have stated that it would be oppressive in Modern.
I think the real concern would be UBx becoming to good. getting to run the best hand disruption plus counterspell back up could lead to nightmare games in which one player never resolves a single threat/spell against a wall of disruption and permission backed up by snapcaster mage.
I think the concerns people have with a UU counter target spell affect is that 8 targeted discard spells, 8 hard counters counterspell + Cryptic and Snapcaster mage might make a viable deck in which it is very possible to on average resolve no spells. T1 IoK, T2 IoK/TS or counterspell, T3 IoK/TS leave up counterspell T4 you can start snaping back the proper spells to simply deny your opponent any possibility of actually resolving any thing.
While I am in favor of a strong counterspell if not actual counterspell it is a very powerful affect and it does have the risk of introducing a deck that has a critical mass of counters and discard spells that can in a manner similar to Lantern Control lock the opponent out of making any relevant actions.
SFM has a reasonable chance of getting unbanned but I'm not that sure of that.
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So you basically want to swap a fair tutor for a tutor that also cheats said tutored cards into play?
I thought the whole point of banning tutors and cantrips was to increase variance so multiple games can play out differently. What you are suggesting is more of a color preference thing then a balancing thing and is inherently biased.
Traverse the Ulvenwald isn't by any means ban-worthy. For one thing it doesn't, unlike some of the tutors already legal in Modern (or Stoneforge Mystic for that matter) sideline the actual mana costs of any of the cards it searches up. Not to mention it does require much more setup then Stoneforge Mystic or, say, Collected Company; Tarfire isn't something you really want to play on it's own merits, nor is Mishra's Bauble.
Speaking of Stoneforge Mystic please don't bring up the "dies to removal" argument. It has been done to death and nobody is convinced. I could just as easily say Hypergenesis is OK because "it can be countered" but I don't think I'd have any takers on that one. It's a really powerful card that would most certainly have a major impact on the format as it would substantially raise it's power level which is why I'm almost certain WotC aren't considering unbanning it.
Many thanks to HotP Studios. Special thanks to DNC for this great sig.
Traverse is not fair cos its the definition of a broken tutor --> cheap and searches for almost anything. The setup it needs is supposed to be the balancing part, but modern has proven that is not enough with cards like bauble and tarfire. And I'm pretty sure they think the same as me at wizards, and if they DO ban something, traverse will be the target and not DS. Plus they prefer to let decks live instead of totally destroying them.
Cards like DS are fine because even if they are very powerful in the right deck, magic balances them by only letting you play 4 of them, and since these types of cards don't usually have functional reprints, everything's good. But then tutors get printed and it gets messy. Has happened during all of magic's lifetime. There's a reason tutors have premium spots on ban lists.
You can't compare it to gsz, gsz mainly slots Into every green deck and forces all of them to play it as a 4, along with putting it back into the deck as reusable. As of now, traverse is mainly used in one deck
Ironically, traverse is better in DS decks than GSZ.
well they have printed 3 so far in moderns card pool and all of them see no real play.
Many thanks to HotP Studios. Special thanks to DNC for this great sig.
Anyways, the card that would be tutored 95% of the times with SFM in Modern would be batterskull.
I'm not even saying I'm 100% sure SFM would be fine in Modern, specially in the long run. But since I'm someone who has no problem with unbanning a card and banning it later on if it becomes a problem, I'd be curious to see SFM unbanned and the (possibly positive) changes it would bring to the modern metagame. If later on they print another even better batterskull card, well, bye bye SFM no problemo.
The Big winners if SFM is unbanned are Abzan, Bant Eldrazi and possibly GW Tron. People under value SFM to much in this forum, she makes equipment far better than it currently is. The biggest issue that Equipment has in Modern is that it is a bad top deck on a naked board and running one of's without a tutor affect is to unreliable. SFM does nothing to bolster a base W deck and I don't even think UWx control decks would want to play it as Celestial beats and instant speed token generators. Maybe BWx tokens gets a boost as flying 5/5 life linking souls tokens does sound strong.
I'm more interested in the losers of SFM's unban, but that's hard to predict, so many variables. Burn and affinity are obvious, then there would be so many metagame changes... this one goes up, then this down, then this up cos of that, etc.
I don't think D&T gets much better with SFM added. That deck really needs another hate bear that attacks a common aspect of the meta-game on the level of Arbiter or Thalia, SFM would help the deck but it would still suffer from the same issues it does now.
Not sure if Esper and Jeskai control decks even run it, maybe it helps a mid-range strategy in those colors or perhaps in enables a new version of caw-blade mid-range to exist. Or maybe they shift towards tap out control
biggest winner IMO is Bant eldrazi simply because the creatures they already run have positive interactions with the creature and the equipment. Just blinking SFM with Displacer for bullets. Fallowed closely by Abzan
certainly other decks will get a boost from SFM but not as much as those two. I mean you could say the same thing about Mental Misstep, it is unbanned all sorts of decks get a boost but others will benefit more than others and perhaps the margins will be vast or perhaps negligible.
GB Rock
U Flooding Merfolk
RUG Delver Midrange
WU Monks
UW Tempo Geist
GW Bogle
GW Liege
UR Tron
B Vampires
Affinity
Legacy
Fish
Goblins
Burn
Reanimator
Dredge
Affinity
EDH
W Akroma
GBW Ghave
BRU Thrax
GR Ruric
I advocate for the elimination of the combo archetype in Modern. I believe it is degenerate and unfun by its very nature and will always limit design space and cause unnecessary bans.
Oddly enough, if they did that, Sword of Feast and Famine is quite good against DS/Goyf as threats.
I would argue that mana denial is much more core to DnT than the taxing. At least in legacy, its the symmetry-breaking interaction between port/waste and vial that wins me more games than anything else. Thalia is fantastic in legacy too, don't get me wrong, but she works in conjunction with the mana denial plan. You also have karakas and Mom to protect her. A Karakas,a vial on 2 or 3 and the corresponding cmc thalia can make it almost impossible for the opponent to win.
Thalia just isn't nearly as good in a non-cantrip format like modern, and arbiter+ghost quarter, while cute, is easy to play around, and arbiter is really bad on its own. If you want DnT to be a tier 1 deck in the format, you need a wasteland variant that actually functions as denial at the very least.
Death and Taxes
Pauper
UB Teachings
Tortured Existence
Murasa Tron
Modern
Pod (RIP)
Bloom(RIP)
Merfolk
Esper Shadow is already a thing, but SFM without Batterskull seems too weak in that deck to play. If you do play Batterskull Death's Shadow becomes kind of obsolete.
My Modern Decks:
BGWAbzan MidrangeWGB
UWRJeskai NahiriRWU
BRUGrixis ControlURB
My final predictions for modern changes;
Stoneforge unbanned
Bloodbraid Elf unbanned (lots of pros have come out recently saying this ban was a mistake)
It is a mistake to think of SFM as a 6 card package; 2 mystics with a couple of select swords, in a deck with ancient stirrings, would actually be quite powerful.